Sunday, October 28, 2018

Chechens Bribing Their Way into Russian Army; Those Drafted in Occupied Crimea Seek to Avoid Service

Paul Goble

Staunton,
October 28 – The fall draft into the Russian armed services began on October 1,
and the responses to it vary widely from region to region. In Chechnya, for
example, there are at least five young men who want to serve for every draft
slot and they are bribing officials to try to get in. In Russian-occupied
Crimea, many in the draft pool are seeking to avoid service.

This
year, the Russian armed services have a draft quota of 500 for the Chechen
Republic. That is only a fifth of the number of young men who would like to
serve, and many are offering bribes of 250,000 rubles (4,000 US dollars) in
hopes of getting in, Mansur Magomalov of Prague’s Caucasus Times reports (caucasustimes.com/ru/chechency-platjat-za-sluzhbu-v-armii/).

This situation is
a remarkable turnabout from a decade ago when Chechens didn’t want to serve and
Russian officers didn’t want to have them in the ranks. It reflects the appearance
of a new generation that didn’t live through the war, the desire for good pay
and a military ticket to get police jobs at home, and the status Chechen
veterans of fighting in Ukraine and Syria have.

For the first 22 years after the end
of the USSR, Moscow didn’t draft anyone from Chechnya. Now, the huge size of the
draft pool there – there are more than 80,000 Chechen men between the ages of
18 and 27 – gives Moscow little choice but to take some, something it has done
since 2014.

But the number Moscow is prepared to
draft remains relatively small compared to that draft cohort and to the demand
to serve because while younger Chechens may have no memory of the two post-Soviet
Chechen wars, senior officers now often began their careers in those conflicts
and don’t want Chechens in the ranks.

Most Chechen draftees will serve in
their own republic or no further away than elsewhere in the North Caucasus.But approximately 100 of the 500 drafted this
cycle will serve in the Russian Guard, Putin’s Praetorians whom the Kremlin may
use to suppress protests and demonstrations.

Meanwhile, according to a report in
Censoru.net, the occupation authorities in Crimea are having some difficulty
filling the 2800 draft slots they have been allotted. Not only does Kyiv oppose
their service in the Russian army, but most of those will be sent far from
home, including to the Far North.

What is striking
here is not only the difference in attitude toward service but the size of the draft
quotas: Moscow is seeking nearly six times as many draftees in Crimea as it is
in Chechnya even though the population of the former is only about 50 percent larger,
an indication of what Russian officers and Moscow would like and how they
evaluate the value of the two.